Tweeting bird feeder keeps a picture record of all visitors

If you weren’t aware, Adafruit Industries is sponsoring the “Make it Tweet” contest over at Instructables, and this Twitter-enabled bird feeder is [quasiben’s] entry into the competition.

His bird feeder not only sends messages to Twitter, it also sends a picture of each bird to Twitpic. The feeder itself is a standard off the shelf model which has been fitted with a LinkSprite camera. A LilyPad Arduino controls the camera, sending images to his computer via a pair of XBee modules. To detect when a bird has stopped by for something to eat, [quasiben] used an infrared LED and an IR detector. The emitter and detector are positioned at opposing sides of the feeder’s opening, triggering the Arduino to snap a picture whenever the beam is broken. Once the image has been transferred to his computer, it is posted to TwitPic.

We’re pretty sure [quasiben] built this Tweeting bird feeder just because he could, but we think it’s a pretty smart idea for people who don’t necessarily have the free time to gaze out the window into their yard. It’s a great way to keep tabs on all your new winged visitors while on the go.

im thinking the focal length on that camera is too long for its current position on the feeder. could be mounted to an arm that is long enough for clear shots with the camera pointed back toward the feeder, rather than right on it. or a lens hack may work — maybe mount a door peep-hole to the front of the camera for a fisheye (shorter focal length) type of effect.

Of course every hack has to be tweaked until it’s ready for prime time, Unfortunately to tweak this he has to put it up for the public to see warts, and all. A scroll down into the instructable comments shows the builder saying it has been raining, so so bird activity. IR detector can be flaky, who knows what’s tripping the shutter. I too think the camera is placed to close to the intended subjects. Get working well I can’t think of a better idea for this contest than tweeting images of the of the original tweeters.

@raidsci yes, instructables is an atrocious mess that effectively ruins projects posted to it. Whatever happened to the instructabliss proxy/filter? It doesn’t seem to work with the url cited in this article.

Thanks for the feedback! I have a better camera (TCM8240MD) on order and a breakout board coming in from seeedstudio later this week. I also agree that the IR gate can be a bit flaky and will probably switch to an ultrasonic detector.